Tony Chong: The Airborne Laser Uncoiled
The Airborne Laser Uncoiled
By Tony Chong
The decades-long quest to field a directed-energy weapons system saw one avenue close when the YAL-1A Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB), formerly known as the Airborne Laser (ABL), made its retirement flight from Edwards AFB, Calif. to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. on Valentine’s Day 2012.
A multi-contractor effort, the ALTB was a modified Boeing 747-400F freighter that carried a Boeing-built battle management system, a Lockheed Martin nose-turret and fire-control system and a heritage TRW, now Northrop Grumman, six-module megawatt-class, high-energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL).
The COIL is an infrared laser created by mixing together gaseous chlorine, molecular iodine, and an aqueous mixture of hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide. The aqueous mixture reacts to the chlorine creating heat, potassium chloride and excited-state oxygen known as singlet delta oxygen. When molecular iodine is injected into the gas stream the energy in the oxygen is transferred to the iodine which produces a stimulated emission that lases.
Building on the successful tests of the Boeing NKC-135A Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL) in the 1980s with its gas-dynamic high-energy laser, the Air Force initiated the ABL Program Definition and Risk Reduction (PDRR) phase in 1996. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) took over management of the program in 2001 and began the acquisition and integration of hardware for the next phase shortly thereafter.